


i'm on fire

by dankobah



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: F/M, adam got a tony nomination and i just needed to express myself, thats all - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-30
Updated: 2019-04-30
Packaged: 2020-02-10 11:27:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,137
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18659512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dankobah/pseuds/dankobah
Summary: Anna is an extension of her while Pale is his second skin.  Scripted emotions of hate, longing, lust, have bled between them like watercolors.  The picture isn’t as idyllic as most want to believe.The picture is two nights before, pressed up against the wall of his dressing room while he fucked her with his fingers until her legs nearly buckled.  It paints how he licked his fingers clean before adjusting his dress shirt that had become creased, picking up his script binder again and resuming reading his lines while she dripped on his couch.Rey hadn’t meant to get so tangled up in her the opposite lead.  It had been an accident.Really.





	i'm on fire

“I cannot believe that Ben gets his own dressing room when we all have to bum it together.”

Rey lifts her head from where it rests on the makeup vanity.  She’s barely awake, those sticky and wet eye masks tacked along her orbital bone to combat the shadows that the back-to-back show nights.  Paige, the leading makeup artist, had told her to put them on before stage door the night before, tossing a box at her as Rey wiped the concealer away with a makeup wipe.

They don’t feel like they’re working, and the pimple cream dotted between her brows is cracking when they knit together at Poe’s whining.  The stress has them all bitter, Poe most of all with his sulky pout and ratty heathered sweats with his script. Ben is just the target for his resentment, corresponding with previous matinee mornings.  This morning is different, here early for a tech rehearsal since someone isn’t doing their sound job very well.

No one likes Ben.  It’s an accepted fact over the three weeks of performing _Burn This_ , even before the first night.  He had been disastrously late to his chemistry audition with Rey, hanging her role in the balance while he had his nepotism fueled guarantee.  Then he had been sulky at the script reading, sunglasses remaining across his eyes and a hoarse voice that sounded so painful. Rey supposes no one can blame him for that last one, finding out later that he had taken three back to back flights in the two days before.  From an audition in Russia to London for a “six-minute waste of time” with a theater director to New York to grace their presence.

He’s her love interest, the one she stands next to the most on stage while they wait for another lighting tweak or for another fight to diffuse between Tobias Beckett and Luke Skywalker.  The former is their director, hot-headed and eccentric; while Luke is their producer and accused of being the central reason why Ben even has the main role.

Though if they watched the two interact, Ben refusing to be in the same room with his uncle or actually speak to him about anything other than work, there’s not a friendliness that would breed nepotism.  If anything, they hate each other.

Rey and Ben hadn’t been good friends at first, even giving snot-nosed glares at each other before a scene would start.  It could’ve been the most romantic take, the two tumultuous lovers in a makeout session, and she’d wipe her lips off like he had laced his chapstick with poison.

Ben is talented, classically trained since age ten. That’s when he began to paper Vanity Fair, Roopkar, New York Times, and Playbills with monikers with “The Skywalkers have done it again”.

From twenty-three to thirty-five, he’s a permanent fixture in the landscape of a shifting Broadway.  He maintains brazen while somehow laying low, interviews being exciting and telling.

_“I earned this all myself.  Got it?”_

Everyone fears him for his acting chops.  Whether he wants to be a hero, a gritty detective, or a sensitive painter; he does it.

That’s why Rey, while she really can’t stand him sometimes, she respects him — especially being regarded as a wonder kid and an underdog given her upbringing.  Rey, according to the assumptions of the media, is fortunate to be an actor. That she’s blessed to have walked into Tobias Beckett’s audition and talked back with the glint of a glare in her eye that’s on the tape, the media doesn’t mention the acting classes, the number of bus breakdowns that had kept her from auditions, or the way she could look to the side and any director could tell her to “fuck off and go back to Minnesota”.  

Rey isn’t even from fucking Minnesota.

No one mentions how hard she works.  Nor the amount of sleep she loses in opt of reading lines, the long and hot showers to remove all the hairspray from her hair and loosen up the congestion in her lungs from shouting for her role.

Only Ben sees it.  He always comprehends when she’s reached her peak, the twitch in her eye or how her shoulders tense up. Usually, being minded over like a new baby by someone like Ben would tick her off. She’s grown to tolerate it over the weeks and to recognize his attempts at being friendly.  The to-go cup of tea and a scone, the dog-eared pages of a book with the note, “This made me think of Anna.”

Anna is an extension of her while Pale is his second skin.  Scripted emotions of hate, longing, lust, have bled between them like watercolors.  The picture isn’t as idyllic as most want to believe.

The picture is two nights before, pressed up against the wall of his dressing room while he fucked her with his fingers until her legs nearly buckled.  It paints how he licked his fingers clean before adjusting his dress shirt that had become creased, picking up his script binder again and resuming reading his lines while she dripped on his couch.

Rey hadn’t meant to get so tangled up in her the opposite lead.  It had been an accident.

Really.

She’s quick to defend him from the likes of Poe, “He asked for it, unlike the rest of us.”

Poe crosses his arms over his chest, probably making sure his biceps flex in an intimidating way.  Though he shuts up, shifting to look back out the van window. She takes the opportunity to slide her phone from her rucksack and click the screen on.

There are two texts from Ben.

**Can’t relax.**

**How are you?**

He’s in his dressing room, but he knows better than to come to talk to her in the shared one.  Rey looks around the room before ducking her head and replying.

_i’m okay, exhausted.  these matinee shows kill me_

**Too restless.**

She knows why, based on the little news notification she had gotten the day before, reminding her of the imminence of the Tony awards nominations.  They’re releasing in half an hour, just an hour before the rise of the curtain.

Paige barrels into the room and sets her sights on Rey.  “You still look tired as hell.”

“Good afternoon to you too.  I got four hours of sleep.”

“Do better.  Take those things off and let me see you fully.”

Rey hurriedly types back on her phone, ignoring Paige.

_getting makeup done.  ill come visit after_

**Sounds good to me.  Bring that robe. They**

**apparently adjusted the opening and**

**I need to see if I need to pad my dick more.**

_thats a funny joke given that you_

_have a literal monster cock_

She ignores his reply in opt for a stressed Paige tipping her chin up and looking her face up and down.  “Are you breaking out too?”

“Isn’t it obvious?”

Paige clicks her tongue and glances at each cheek.  “Hormones?”

“More like the only thing open late by my house is a pizza place.”

“Eat better.  Now stay still.”

❖❖❖❖❖❖❖❖❖❖❖❖❖❖❖❖❖❖❖❖❖❖❖❖❖❖❖❖❖❖❖❖❖❖❖

Ben woke up wired like a bunny rabbit on crack.

Typically, when playing Pale, he’s dead tired and hoarse the next morning.  All the yelling, the emotional release, making out with the girl you both despise and have a raging crush on; all of it adds up.

Tony nominations are some of the biggest honors of a theater actor’s arsenal, right next to getting the actual Tony.  Ben’s been “snubbed” so many times that he’s convinced the Tonys aren't real. They are only a fantasy concocted in his mind.  This year is different. Everyone has been saying that this is the year of Ben Organa Solo, that he’s taking back the Skywalker name and getting awards.  All of the attention is nervewracking, the weird fanbase of girls he’s accumulated at his stage door, the complexity of the role, the fact that his co-star is bearable this time around.

Sure, sometimes she grates on him and sometimes he wants to scream in her face off stage.  But he also wants to fuck her, destroy her, show her pure desire like she’s never seen before.  He wants to coach her, teach her all about the world of theater and how to keep anyone from touching you.

They could rule Broadway, side by side.  

He clinched her when he fingered her, after an argument about a line delivery.

_“More passion.”_

_She looks from her script, scowling at him with a pure fire flickering in her eyes.  Ben holds steady, leaning against the dressing room door._

_“Excuse me?”_

_He doesn’t hesitate, “More passion for that delivery.  I’m not feeling it.”_

_She rolls her eyes, and he’s ready to grab her neck and squeeze.  “Don’t tell me how to play my character. I don’t tell you.”_

_“It was only a suggestion.”_

_Rey looks back at her script before tossing it to the side.  “No. You don’t give suggestions to me.”_

_“I can if I want to.”  He leans off the door and steps closer to her.  Rey steps even closer, looking up at him with the same glower on her face._

_She’s slow in her speaking, “You can’t do anything, why would I take advice from you.”_

_“I can’t?  Nothing at all?”_

_“Nothing.”_

_“I’ll show you something I can do.”_

He showed her until her legs trembled.  Ben’s never fucked a scene partner before, usually making it a policy not to get personally tangled in anyone.  Let alone an insufferable girl who he’s passionately in love with on stage.

Though he likes it when she visits, the knock on the door getting him to shoot up from the couch in pure adrenaline.  His phone is on silent and set across the room so he’ll stop checking it, so he’s utterly bored when he wrenches open the door to greet Rey Niima in **the** robe.  

Purple and satin, flowers bloom across the kimono and down to her socked feet.  The socks are an extra touch, given that off stage is cold and she hasn’t refreshed her pedicure yet.

She’s holding her phone up, the screen bright and almost hurting his eyes.

“Congratulations.”

Ben is disoriented, “Huh?”

She walks into the room and shuts the door.  She begins to read, “Best Leading Actor in a Play.  Armitage Hux in Choir Boy, Dopheld Mitaka in The Ferryman, Ben Organa Solo in Burn This-”

The world whites out, and he rips the phone from her in a single whiplike movement.  The girl has to be joking. She couldn’t-

His name is in the standard text on a list on deadline.com, an actual publication.  He scrolls up to confirm it’s the Tony nominations, then down to himself once more.  Back and forth, back and forth until his eyes get whiplash and he tosses the phone on the couch like it’s a burning piece of coal.

“No.  That’s not real.”

Rey begins to giggle, reaching to hold his biceps as he keeps the panic poorly at bay.  There’s no way.

“Congratulations.”

“Stop that.  There’s no way.”

“It’s very real, Ben.  Congratulations.”

Ben is still shaking his head, being careful not to fuck up his hair as he smooths the sides of it repeatedly.  She’s still smiling up at him, “You deserve it.”

Does he?  Pale is a complex character in himself, sometimes a challenge to figure out.  How could he be nominated, especially since he had a weird voice crack on a line delivery the week before-

“I can’t-”

“You did.  Sit down with me.”  She’s pushing him with some effort, causing him to flop on the couch while she delicately sits down like a princess.  Her fingers come to stroke through his hair as he sits in open-mouthed shock.

Rey is too supportive for this earth.  “That’s-”

“That’s a Tony, yes.  You got nominated for one.”

“No way.”

“Yes, congratulations.  The play also got nominated.”

He rushes out, “What about you?”

Rey’s head shakes.  “Not me. There’s always next year though.”

The amount of guilt he feels at the apparent snub is astronomical, and he scoots closer to her.  “You deserve it. They’re so stupid.”

“How can they be stupid if they nominated you?  It’s magnificent, Ben. I didn’t need a nomination this year. I only just got started.”

His head shakes.  “No, you deserve it.  But I guess you’ll get yours next year.”

She nods while smiling, and somehow they’ve started holding hands in the shuffle of nervousness and disbelief.  Holding hands is intimate, but everything is intimate with them. Kissing on stage is like no one is there and they're in his apartment in the middle of a quarrel.

Nothing stops him from kissing her now, pulling her impossibly close as her lips part.

He had to reinforce how he got the nomination after all.

**Author's Note:**

> i work fast sometimes. congratulations to adam driver and his 2019 tony nomination!
> 
> thoughts and feelings r welcome @ [twitter](https://twitter.com/dankobah) and [tumblr](https://dankobah.tumblr.com/). 
> 
> chapter title is inspired by ["i'm on fire" by bruce springsteen](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzQvGz6_fvA)


End file.
